Murphy Jax - We Dance

Murphy Jax - We Dance
After records for Clone Jack For Daze and My Favorite Robot, Berlin's Murphy Jax joins Tiga's Turbo Recordings with another EP of classically-minded house. "We Dance" is winsome and wistful, with cool organ tones underpinning a lilting string melody, and a hushed voice intoning a kind of one-person call-and-response: "Economy's going down / Dance… / Society's going down / dance…" It's a nice twist on house music's imperative tense, couched in traditional tones but tuned specifically to the tenor of the present day. (Also nice, whether or not it's intentional, is the way the lyrics gradually slip out of time against the rhythm.)

"It's Time to Bump" finds Jax taking up his ongoing affair with the 303, muttering the titular phrase over a squiggling acid line and faintly cinematic chords that lend extra depth; "8Bit Epos" grinds along at 108 BPM, with the sort of growling arpeggios and soft analog leads somewhere between Vangelis and Crème Organization. "Suburban Path," the lone outlier, takes up Kompakt's old cry to "Bring Trance Back," with fat, dotted-eighth chords glowing like the coils of some inscrutable machine.

Remixes come from Matt Walsh & Zhao, the Throne Of Blood label's Populette and Freak Seven. The latter's mix isn't as freaky as their excellent "Nano Kids," for Rush Hour, but it's nonetheless a white-knuckled ride through delayed toms and helter-skelter blips. Populette blow "We Dance" into a shivering bright deep house/acid hybrid, while Walsh and Zhao give "It's Time to Bump" a spellbinding percussive workout, a jagged boneyard of desiccated drums and bloody 303s. If you've got a long night ahead of you and limited space in your record bag, you really can't go wrong with this: seven tracks, seven moods, it's a seven-sided die with serious hit points.